


Salt Glass

by sybilius



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Enemies to Lovers, Fanfiction for Original Novel, Gay, M/M, Morally Grey Characters, More tags to be added, Pirates, Prisoner/Captor dynamics, also evil characters, backstory fic, gay pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:26:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24709828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybilius/pseuds/sybilius
Summary: Karro has his life working as the right hand pistol-draw to Captain Luis-- not much of a life, but when could a pirate ask for any kind of purpose, much less happiness?The feared pirate captain Sentenza takes as he likes -- or whatever his crew will be paid to do. It's a thankless life, but he's got a reputation to uphold.A rumor of a map leading to two chests filled with lost blood money sends the two men on a collision course.*Really, a dumping/archiving ground for backstory fanfiction for my own novel drafts. Loosely inspired by a fanfiction of mine on here.
Relationships: Karro/Luis (One-sided), Karro/Sentenza, Thierry & Sentenza
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Salt Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so. A few notes about this work.
> 
> This is an archived version of backstory chunks I'm writing for an original novel I'm working on. My official take on this is that it is "fanfiction for my own novel". I cannot promise this will still exist if/when I ever manage to finish drafting the darn thing and bang into into shape for anything resembling publication, but in CASE it does, this was the backstory I had in mind for Karro and Sentenza. That does not mean you have to take it as canon; in fact I encourage you to do up your own. ^_^
> 
> Further caveats, I will not update this in any sensible order whatsoever. I mean, sometimes you'll have Chapter 6, and then Chapter 4 will appear, and if you're following this god help you. I'm writing this for me, but I also realize that some folks like my writings about them (<3 bless), and I personally find Ao3 to be a much more enjoyable medium than tumblr to read things on.
> 
> The work this is inspired by is parts of my series "talking won't save you". Those who have read both will see the parts I mean :)
> 
> So without further ado, here we are! I'll try my best to give small contextualizations to each chapter, and I have a notional outline of the "whole story" so I'll label each chapter with its number and keep them in order of appearance, rather than writing ^_^

I’m so deep into thinking about the dream I might as well be asleep. Or at least, when my eyes come into focus, it’s on the shoreline, gaining knots on us by the minute. I shake the hair away from my eyes, my hands still firm on the rope. I could have sworn a moment before, we were still bound for the endless blue horizon. I tug at the rope once more. I guess anything can be muscle memory. 

The dream though. I haven’t decided if I should be afraid of it or no. 

It’s the captain’s cabin, that dim dark-wood haven I’m only ever in when the crew is gone. There’s Sentenza’s face, hooded and guarded by the oil lantern’s light. He’s mumbling words in a language I don’t understand -- something archaic about it, rhythmic and distant. He takes a book down from his shelf, opens it to the first page. Asks me to read it. When I try to take it from him, to take a look, he crosses the room. Leaves out the stairs to the ship.

The ship is empty. No -- it’s covered in barrels. Thick, greasy stench. He throws the book on the pile. I call out to him. 

He shakes his head. Then, before I can move, it all catches fire, and him with it --

That’s when I wake, usually. I rub my eyes against the cool salt sting, willing myself to bring my thoughts back to the waking world. I join the rank and file of the crew. They banter to each other, but I barely hear it. 

The fire-- I understand that much, about the blood-soaked dirty business we’re bound to. But what are the dreams trying to say about what comes before? Sometimes I feel like Sentenza offers himself up for my reading, but most of the time he snatches that away before I can get very far. I worry at the sore inside my cheek with my tongue. Maybe that’s what the language at the start means. That even if I could get a good look, I wouldn’t understand it anyways. 

That a good reason not to try?

Course, I could ask myself what the hell the point of trying is, when he’s so damn stuck on burning these people’s livelihood to the ground. I take up another length of rope, ready to guide us into harbor as I follow Thierry’s barked orders.

Still. I know what I traded for my freedom. I’m on crew, he’s still who I call captain. 

By the time we roll in it’s getting dark. The crew are getting raucous-- rolling the casks of rum ashore where we'll make camp for the night. We're on the north side of the island. There’s good cover here, even I have to admit. The south is where the victims lie in wait. I could, I guess, slip away here. I don't know that Sentenza would stop me. 

Like with most times, though, it’s the dream that keeps me following the path he forges through the cooling palm grove. I keep to the outskirts of the crew, like always. Thinking about Luis again. I could have talked him out of this mercenary scheme easy, even if I can’t say for sure he wouldn’t have said yes for the right price.

I don’t want to go back to him. But staying gets worse by the day. 

I catch sight of Sentenza, shadowed and apart from the others as they gather fuel for a bonfire. I guess leaving gets harder too. 

As the sun sets, the crew gets going with the noise and the drink, bloodthirst made into merriment. I shouldn’t be bitter about it, but I have to force down the fresh fish that Lee and Carthan have caught. Why should they have second thoughts? I know they’ve done worse. And if I don’t like it, I should get out. That thought I half-hear in Sentenza’s voice. 

I lean against a tree weighted with coconuts that I can just make out in the moonlight. Good luck, or bad-- maybe I’ll just wait to see what comes to me. Always served me before. I’m just about to slip into thinking about the dream again when there’s a rough grunt beside me. 

“You -- Karro, is it?” 

I flinch, even though the voice is quiet amid the clamor of the music and men by the fire. It’s the first mate, Thierry who emerges from the shadow of the palms in the evening. I shake the ale I’d spilled off my fingers. I don’t know that Sentenza’s mate has ever once addressed me. Often as I’d seen them talking.

“Yes sir,” I respond, taking a draught of my ale to cover my uncertainty. 

“Captain’s on the outskirts of the revelry tonight. Drinking awful heavy,” Thierry grunts, jerking his head towards the circle. I had noticed that Sentenza hasn’t taken up his usual place telling raucous stories to the crew. The drinking… that was another thing. 

“Mm,” I study his taciturn gaze, “Right.”

“I want a favor.”

“Which?”

“Stick to ale only tonight. No spirits,” Thierry takes a careful sip from a flask at his side, “You ask me, he’s going to need the company tonight. And I need him sharp for tomorrow.”

That surprises me though -- maybe it shouldn’t. I wonder if Luis would ever do the same for me. Ask someone to look out for me that way. I mean, who would it be, other than him?

“You’re asking me?”

“Clearly,” Thierry raises an eyebrow dryly, “I only half had any luck with it before. And now? God knows.”

“Before?”

“Yeah. So you’ll do it?”

“Um. Of course, yes.”

“Good man,” he claps me on the back briefly, then disappears towards the fire before I can think to ask any further. 

The light of the fire seems to get more distant, even as I approach Sentenza with slow steps. The weight of the promise I made is heavy on my tongue. Hell, promise? When did I start making promises to anyone but Luis? 

Okay, easy answer. When he broke the only promise I thought he’d keep. Still doesn’t make this any easier. I finish up my mug of ale, deciding it’ll be the last for tonight, stowing it in my bag. Though the firelight is dim, I can still make out his hawkish profile, turning towards me from his sullen watch. 

"You want to get out of here?" I murmur, keeping an eye on the others around the fire. Not too many of them are watching. 

"Captain's captain," he mumbles, taking another sip from the glinting bottle

"So they need you tomorrow. Don't look like they're missing you now."

"They _do_ ," he glares, stormy in a moment. I crouch down to look him in the eye. The answer is one that slips from my lips like a dream. 

"I do."

He blinks, the usual glint of clever machinations in his eyes made dull and simple by liquor, "You're greedy."

"One of us usually is," it slips out more bitter than I mean it, the guilt lurching in my stomach a moment later. 

“All right.”

I stand up then, offer my hand. He doesn’t take it, even though he sways where he stands. Leaves the bottle on the log where he was sitting, though. We walk deep into the palm grove, till the fire is just a pinprick in the distance. He keeps looking back, checking if we’re being watched. His movements are too sharp, which set him bumping into the huge leaves of the bushes or into my shoulder.

I catch him on the third time, swallowing back my nervousness. He raises an eyebrow weakly, part of the confidence I know so well -- and something else. Something I’ve seen only in those first few sin-soaked hellish weeks we knew each other. 

I want to tell him it’ll be alright, they won’t miss him for the hour or so it’ll take for him to sober up. The words dry up in my mouth. So instead, I kiss the sear of the rum off his tongue. 

He comes off still shaky, fumbling at the buckle of my belt. I knock his hand away easily, not knowing why. I guess liquor is one distraction and fucking is another. I have to catch his arm though, even as he laughs. I lower his body with mine, to the soft ground. 

The rustle of earth and leaves sounds near me. I suppose he’s rummaging about. He stops, “What, you aren’t worried about snakes?”

I shrug once, “No. More worried about you falling into a cactus.”

“We’re in the jungle.”

“I’ve seen ‘em here,” I reply, and he nods with a half-laugh against my shoulder. Gods. There’s something so unsteady about him. I think about the half-whispered argument we had below decks, where he might as well have told me he’d maroon me at the next island if I questioned him again. Don’t think he meant it though. If he had, I’d have dreamed different. 

“Did what I said really get to you that bad?” I’m not sure if I regret that or not. But he just snorts.

“You’re giving yourself too much credit.”

I let that sit a moment. A few cigars from that ill-begotten port we last left are in my pocket. I pull one out, strike a match. It’s funny. I think it’s because he’s not smoking. Wherever that ever-present pipe of his is right now, he doesn’t take it out. I take a breath in of the harsh tobacco before I speak. 

“All right then, enlighten me.”

He snorts again. Then after a moment of silence, says, “I didn’t know you knew that word.”

The list of things we don’t know about each other is probably endless. I settle back, taking in the sweet-salty smell of flowers mixed with the nearby shore. Then, I offer him the cigar. He surprises me when he takes it, the coal of its end just casting light on his sharp profile. 

“Think you’re not giving me enough credit. How much do you think you know about me?” I ask. He passes the cigar back, and he’s sliding now, his arm along my back. I tense, wondering if I’ll have to knock away his wandering hands again, but he just slumps, his head settling on my outstretched thigh. Huh. 

“Hmm,” he brushes thinning hair off his forehead, “Did you ever have a brother?”

I stare into the darkness of the grove for a moment, surprised by the question, “Um. Maybe. Yeah, I think a few?”

“You...think?” I can just make out the confused furrow of his brow in the dark.

“I don’t really remember much before I left home.”

He shakes his head, “I could never forget my brother. For many a reason, so many reasons.”

He points then, clumsy and theatrical, to his left eye, the sightless glass. I swallow. I’d never got it in me to ask. I didn’t think he’d come out with it -- ever. Never mind like this. 

“You must have really hated him,” I say quietly, after a moment. Sentenza sits up then, the sparkle in his living eye almost desperate.

“No. No, he -- there were many things he didn’t understand, that were difficult to understand for him. He didn’t mean to do it. Any of it, I -- know that.” 

I can’t say I really understand that, so I just tilt my head at Sentenza, put my hand against his neck gently. Sober, I know that would be a mistake -- but apparently it isn’t this time, because he just leans into my touch, a sigh dropping through him. 

“Have you ever met someone who can’t trust their own eyes, sometimes?”

“What -- possessed by a demon?”

“I don’t know that I could call it that. Perhaps. I know where that demon came from, at least. But I know my brother -- tried not to hurt anyone.”

I swallow down a lot of pointless words before I settle on, “Sounds like he did you.”

Sentenza just scoffs, “He did worse to my family. Not that they didn’t push him off the edge. Not that they didn’t deserve it. I’d take him back over them any day-- any day I could stop that fire from taking him too...”

“Is that what this is about? You getting second thoughts about this job?” I can hardly believe it, but of course, Sentenza shoves me in the leg. It’s half-hearted though. And he lays his head back down so -- shit, should I be bringing that up now? 

“Fact that my family burned to death shouldn’t stop me doing a job I’ve been paid for.”

“You could have turned it down,” I say it before I think about it. Sentenza won’t like it but-- People’s lives at stake. Innocent people, who don’t usually get caught up in what we are. Whatever his history was. 

“And who would I be, then?”

“Well. That’s back to where we started. Do I know who you are?”

He laughs a little, reaching up to snatch the cigar from my mouth. I let him. He turns it over in his hand after he’s had a drag, considering it, “You are clever, you know. That’s why I like you. Among other reasons.”

I don’t really know how to take that. I take the cigar back, place its dampness between my lips. Not sure anyone’s ever said they liked me before -- not like that. I slip a hand across his chest absently, and he doesn’t push me away. Hell of a time to have a truce. 

The cigar burns down to nothing. 

“We going to be safe if we sleep here?” I ask. 

“No more or less safe than by the fire. It’ll stay warm overnight.”

“Guess so,” I rearrange my body, his head overtop my arm, without asking him. He doesn’t argue that either. The ground is soft. The birds around that call quietly -- well, I haven’t been to this island before, but they sound like anywhere else. 

It’s here, though. Here, that he’s asleep beside me, smelling like rum and the fungal perfume of the ground beneath us. All that rot and sweetness set to burn. I wonder to myself what I might dream from this. 

As it turns out, nothing comes. 

I should have woken up. 

Should have woken up, but the last thing I remember was him, lying down beside me, flexing his fingers in the filtered moonlight as if seeing them for the first time. I thought -- I thought I was sleeping on his arm, then. 

He shifted in the night, I remember that now. I scrub the sleep out of my eyes. It’s early, earlier even than he said that we’d do it. 

The air tastes like ash. 

They’ve done it. I guess I should have known. I never was a part of that crew. Not in any way that mattered. 

I struggle to my feet. My bag is still there, though there’s no sign of the camp to be found. I could turn around, back to the open road, maybe try and find Luis again. Instead, I stumble in the direction of the plume of smoke. 

The stinging in my eyes only gets stronger. The stock houses are beyond saving, now, and what’s within them ashen. There should be shouting, screaming even. Is everyone dead? What the hell’s happened? A sickening lurch hits my stomach.

I have to go after Sentenza -- and yet. How can I go after him, after this? How could I have ever thought that? 

I stand, stock-still in the haze of the air, as the drunken words that spilled from his lips last night come back to me. God. Hell itself brought me here, didn’t it? 

Heavy boots sound in the smoke.

“Sentenza?” I call out.

That’s when the bullet catches me in the leg. 


End file.
